Obama administration officials are rushing to explain photos from 2014 that went viral this weekend showing locked-up immigrant children
- Several 2014 photos of detained immigrant children resurfaced on Twitter over the weekend and went viral.
- Former Obama administration officials tried to explain the context behind the photos, which appeared to show migrant kids locked up in cages.
- The former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau had shared the images on Twitter, mistakenly believing they were taken during Donald Trump's presidency.
- The former officials doubled down on their criticisms of Trump's immigration policies, and said the 2014 photos showed unaccompanied children the government had been attempting to place with family members.
Several former Obama administration officials took to social media and news outlets on Tuesday to explain a gallery of years-old photos that showed immigrant children sleeping in shoddy conditions at a government-run holding facility in Arizona.
The images, which were first published by the Associated Press in 2014, resurfaced over the weekend for reasons that remain unclear, and quickly prompted viral outrage on Twitter. One particularly disturbing image showed two children sleeping on mattresses on the floor inside what appeared to be a cage.
A number of prominent liberals â and even a former Obama administration official â shared the photos in outrage, mistakenly believing they depicted the Trump administration's treatment of immigrant children who were forcibly separated from their parents.
Jon Favreau, who worked as a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, tweeted, "This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible."
Favreau said Tuesday he later deleted the tweet after social media users pointed out that the photos were taken during the Obama administration. But by that point, critics had already rushed to accuse him of concealing Obama's own harsh immigration tactics while condemning Trump's.
